Tag: Crystal Palace

New Filings Coming in Southern Holdings Case

New court filings in the Southern Holdings case next week are expected to fully reveal a wide ranging conspiracy to keep details of the case from ever being heard in open court.

According to sources familiar with the new information, it will detail why the Federal Bureau of Investigation provided experts to testify in depositions about key pieces of evidence in the case.

The FBI is specifically prohibited by federal law from becoming involved in civil lawsuits where the federal government is not a party. The federal government is not a party in Southern Holdings yet the FBI became involved.

The original Southern Holdings case began with the attempt of former Myrtle Beach resident Ancil Garvin, III and several co-conspirators attempting to take over the shares and contracts of Southern Holdings Inc.

The name Ancil Garvin III may be familiar to some readers with the fraudulent financing and ultimate failure of the Bahama Island and Crystal Palace projects in North Myrtle Beach.

A company called Atlewa Trust, of which Garvin was a co-founder in 2004 with Rufus Paul Harris and DuWayne Woods, was supposed to provide the financing for the projects. Instead, approximately $6 million of down payments went missing from escrow accounts.

Harris and Woods are currently serving time in federal prison for this and other scams they were involved with. Garvin remains free and allegedly living on Mindanao in the southern Philippines.

The real asset of Southern Holdings that Garvin wanted was exclusive contracts to import cigarettes into Venezuela, worth approximately $20 million. However, the company Southern Holdings took over to obtain the contracts, Ivestra, was also involved in the cigarette black market operating over the Venezuela/Columbia border.

Bahama Island condo ‘financier’ Duwayne Woods arrested

When Will Somebody Arrest Ancil Garvin?

Sun News investigative reporter David Wren reported yesterday that Larry Duwayne Woods, the alleged mastermind behind the failed Bahama Island and Crystal Palace condominium projects financing scam, was arrested in San Diego, CA and will be returned to South Carolina to face charges.

Woods disappeared in 2007 when federal investigators began looking into the business dealings of local developers Jeff Shoup and Tommy Hix of T and J Development in North Myrtle Beach. Hix and Shoup are currently in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail, wire and bank fraud in connection with the failed condominium projects.

Woods, through his alleged business Atlewa Trust, was supposed to finance the projects, but got away with approximately $5 million of escrow money paid by advance purchasers of the condominiums.